by Evan Currie
“Enemy vessels are closing on the orbit of the gas giant, Fleet Commander.”
“Follow them in,” Jesan ordered, now paying full attention as the pursuit was entering its last legs.
His fleet’s lead elements were almost within engagement range, and he’d ordered them to fire as soon as they had even a partial lock on the enemy vessels. For the moment, they were all aiming for the destroyer, simply because the smaller ships were considerably more difficult to target at range.
They would have to get much closer for those.
They are rather difficult to properly scan, he noted.
The power curves were visible, however, so they had a reasonable location for each within a certain margin of error; it was just too large a margin for precision targeting at special ranges.
“Lead vessels have opened fire, Fleet Commander.”
“Finally,” Jesan grumbled. “Show the telemetry.”
An augmented view of the fleet came up on the main display, showing a beam emerging from three of the vanguard ships and moving slowly across the intervening space toward where the enemy destroyer was entering the gravity well of the gas giant.
An odd choice, ducking in closer to a significant gravity well, Jesan thought. They were limiting their own acceleration, or risking the collapse of their space-warp, not to mention picking up a massive amount of debris if the warp didn’t collapse.
He cringed involuntarily at the thought of what would happen to a ship moving at that velocity through the planetary rings of dust and debris if its space-warp collapsed.
It would save us the power required to destroy them, I suppose.
“They have to cut power soon,” his sub-commander said, also examining the telemetry.
“Perhaps.” Jesan wasn’t so certain.
“You do not believe so?”
“Desperation makes fools of wise men.” He laughed mirthlessly. “And those Belj fools were not wise men at the best of times.”
The sub-commander snorted. “As you say, Fleet Commander.”
The beam had crossed half the distance while they talked, but something else had occurred as well.
“They’ve accelerated,” the sub-commander said, surprised.
“What?” Jesan shifted his focus, noting that the destroyer had, indeed, increased power to the drives. He scoffed, shaking his head. “Fools indeed.”
Baphon
Steph was amused to note that everyone around him was calm as the ship dove through the rings of the gas giant, warping space at higher and higher rates as they came into the planet incredibly steeply. Of course, that calm demeanor was because no one who might understand what he was doing had any idea he was doing it.
The Marines all had access to the ship’s telemetry, but even Harris beside him had no clue just how dangerous the current maneuver was.
The destroyer was angled down into the planet, warping space ever more efficiently as Milla’s work began to pay off. They were likewise being pulled into the planet by the gravity of the massive super-Jupiter, increasing their speed marginally by both the direct force of gravity and by the motion of the planet as it traveled around the local star.
“Milla, I’m going to need a custom warp geometry in a few minutes,” he said measuredly, hoping not to alert her as the only person on the ship with both access to what he could see and the knowledge to recognize how crazy the stunt was.
“Are you out of your mind, Stephan?” The frustrated woman’s accent was more pronounced under the pressure of the moment. “This is not the Odysseus, or even one of my Archangels. I cannot predict how this ship will react to such a change.”
“Doesn’t matter. I need it done. I’m sending you the specifications,” he said, shooting off the details.
After he’d sent them, Steph knew instantly that he’d made a mistake. Alright, perhaps the word “mistake” was a bit much, since drastic action was necessary, but there was no way she wouldn’t recognize what he’d sent.
Three . . . two . . . one . . .
“Stephan! Are you insane?! Why are we diving into the gas giant’s upper atmosphere?!”
He was about to answer when an explosion behind the destroyer caused him to shift his focus. “Archangels, what the hell was that?”
Cardsharp came back a moment later. “Imperial laser just nailed the debris ring, burned up a hell of a lot of dust on your six, boss. Just FYI, I think you’re in their range now.”
“Yeah, got that. Alright, I need eyes close but not too close. You’ll be harder to target. Don’t go taking a shot meant for us.”
“We haven’t planned it, boss. Good luck.”
Steph grinned, swapping over to Milla’s channel. “Does that answer your question? We need time, and I’m going to buy it. Now, get me those custom geometries pronto, Milla!”
Her inarticulate barrage of frustration was all he heard before the channel went dead, causing him to grin widely as he adjusted the ship’s vectors while they slipped past the super-Jupiter’s magnetosphere and entered into the extreme edge of the planet’s atmosphere.
“Sir?”
“What is it, Harris?” Steph asked, not glancing aside.
“I’m no expert, I know, but is a warp ship supposed to be this close to a large gravity source while under power?” the Marine asked.
“Nope.”
“Okay, that’s what I thought.”
Apparently satisfied that his boss either knew what he was doing or was completely crazy, the Marine fell silent, seemingly fine with either outcome. Steph grinned.
He’d practically grown up with Marines, thanks to Eric, but had never actually signed up himself. The situation during the war got so desperate for a while that it just wasn’t a good use of his time to bother with basic training or even the more advanced versions. He knew how to fly, and the newly born Confederation needed pilots in a desperate way, so he was dropped right into the cockpit with Eric as his wingman.
By the time the war was over, the idea that he might need to sign up with any unit never crossed his mind. He was an Archangel. No other unit could compare in his eyes.
Still, there were times when he just absolutely loved the almost-fatalistic loyalty inherent in Marines.
“Everyone, hang on,” he said aloud. “It’s about to get rough.”
Imperial Third Fleet
Jesan nodded in appreciation as he saw the maneuver for what it was.
“They are increasing their immediate acceleration while putting the planet and rings between us,” he said. “Not entirely unimpressive, though the risk is rather extreme, I must say.”
“Not compared to being caught by us,” his sub-commander said quietly, a hint of grudging admiration in his tone.
“Truth,” Jesan admitted.
He examined the telemetry, then gestured to the display. “Split the fleet around the planet. We’ll intercept as they emerge.”
“As you order, Fleet Commander.”
Jesan didn’t care how impressive the maneuver was, he wasn’t taking his fleet into that mess.
“Commander, are they doing what I think they’re doing?” the sub-commander asked, his head tilting slightly as he stared in shock at the display.
Jesan looked closer, blinking in shock as well.
The destroyer was turning over as it dove, going into the upper atmosphere of the planet, inverted, deep enough that on the Third Fleet’s scans they could see the friction burn beginning despite the warping of space still being easily detectable.
“The commander of that ship is certifiably insane,” Jesan said firmly.
His sub-commander had no inclination whatsoever to argue.
Archangel Two
The Belj destroyer Baphon continued to dive through the upper ionosphere of the gas giant, its warp field shimmering as it sucked up charged particles at dangerous rates. The ship was quickly masked from the visual scans of the trailing Archangels as the heat friction and charged particles combined to create a blast field th
at was all but entirely opaque.
Normally that field would have blinded the ship as well, making its pilot guess at tiny details like altitude and whether or not they were about to crash into something, but since the Baphon had been blind before the dive, little had changed on board.
Archangel Two skipped over the atmosphere, keeping under the rings of the planet as it accelerated to catch up with the Baphon’s emergence point, continuously transmitting telemetry data on high-powered direct beam signals to the ship.
Alexandra Black shook her head as she noted the changes in the acceleration of the destroyer, amazed it was holding together. She was quite certain that, short of possibly Eric Weston, there wasn’t a captain in the Terran forces who’d take a new cruiser in perfect shape through a maneuver like she was seeing, let alone a battered old destroyer whose best days were long past.
“Goddamn him if he isn’t making it work,” she said over the tactical link with the other pilots.
“That is the most annoying thing about him, Noire,” Tyke said.
A flash of light made both of them flinch as another laser burst was wasted on the planet’s rings.
“They’re getting persistent,” Cardsharp noted. “And closer.”
“Too close,” Black said. “We’re cutting this whole thing too damn close. What the hell is he thinking?”
“He’s getting into the cover,” Tyke answered. “Maybe a little too much, maybe not. We’ll be better able to evaluate after we get out of this.”
“You mean if we get out of it?” Black asked dryly.
“Crown is Double A,” Tyke said firmly. “We don’t stop, we don’t give up. Get used to it, Noire, you’re in the family now.”
“Why do you call him Crown, anyway?” Cardsharp interjected into the silence.
“That’s his call sign.”
“I thought it was Stephanos? Was that prick lying to us this whole time?” she demanded, irritated.
Tyke laughed. “He just doesn’t like the story of how he got named. Stephanos is ancient Greek for, well, crown.”
Sensing a story, Cardsharp’s tone turned eager. “What’s not to like about the call sign Crown?”
“I’ll tell you later, when the boss is around to hear it, but you’re assuming he got the name based on the royal symbol. Don’t.”
Baphon
Steph grimaced as the ship shook around him, the temperatures registering on board beginning to spike, and generally everything starting to feel like it was going to fall apart at any moment.
Why do I feel a chill down my spine while I’m sweating like a pig? he wondered absently as he kept making course corrections based on his best guess of the ship’s location, as interpreted from the ball of fire that the Archangels could see that marked the Baphon’s passage through the atmosphere.
Everyone had an idea that something wasn’t quite right at this point, but Steph ignored all of them as he worked.
“Milla, I need those new geometries,” he gritted out.
“Stephan, with all respect,” she screamed in his ear, “if you want a miracle, come down here and do it yourself!”
“Hard pass, bit busy up here.”
“Yes, I am aware of what you are busy doing, you madman!”
“If this is going to work, we need those changes, Milla. No rush, though.”
“Shut up and let me work!”
Milla snarled as she unsealed her helmet and angrily tossed the hardened shell aside, letting it clatter to the deck as she got back to work.
“Lieutenant Commander!”
One of the Marines had turned, blurting at her in shock.
“It was distracting me from my work,” she growled, furiously working on the equipment.
“Ma’am, you should keep your helmet on.” The Marine quickly surveyed the room for threats.
Milla snorted. “If any of them wish to die, they may shoot me in the head now. It will save me a great deal of pain if I fail, I suspect.”
Not having an answer to that, the Marine fell silent as Milla continued to work. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead, where she was no longer protected by the climate-controlled system of the armor. But she ignored the discomfort as she set a new series of coded commands into the ship’s reactor control.
“The commander, he is insane,” she said, her tone almost conversational in nature. “You know that, right?”
The Marine shrugged in his armor. “Good combat commanders usually are, to one degree or another.”
“You people never cease to intrigue me,” she said, entering the last few commands. “Infuriate me as well, of course, but intrigue nonetheless.”
With something of a flourish she entered the last command and executed the code, turning to the local crew who were struggling to keep the entire system from flying apart under the stresses they were flying through.
“Ready yourselves,” Milla ordered. “Expect surges and new stressors. We need to keep the strain on the systems from blowing out anything until we get clear of the Imperial Fleet!”
Then she grabbed her helmet, not putting it back on but bringing it close enough to speak into.
“Stephan, changes implemented!”
“Grab on to something!” Steph ordered as he sent the ship deeper into the atmosphere of the gas giant, plunging through the ionosphere into the upper thermosphere.
The shaking of the Baphon intensified around them as the ship’s space-time warp couldn’t deal with the added stresses and began to transmit more and more of the forces into its hull.
“External heat is reaching dangerous levels,” one of the crew called out from across the command deck.
Steph didn’t know who it was, and didn’t bother turning to see. He knew what the stresses were, far better than anyone else at the moment. The bow shock ahead of the ship was actually limiting the worst of the effects, but the heat and pressure were increasing as the Baphon plunged ever deeper.
Milla’s alterations to the warping of space around them were coming into play, however, as the atmosphere thickened and the warp field began to have something to bite into.
He remembered pulling a similar move in his Archangel, near the end of the war. They’d been pushing the limits so much in those days, becoming legends in their own times—and in their own minds. He grinned as the ship began to shudder violently around him, as Steph took her down into the atmosphere of the gas giant, knowing they were trailing fire for a thousand kilometers in their wake.
Some days, I love my job.
Chapter 21
Archangel One
“Holy shit.”
Tyke’s whispered words were almost reverent as he watched the destroyer plunge through the atmosphere of the gas giant, accelerating the whole while as it used the bow shock of the space-warp to lower friction and increase the efficiency of the gravity assist the commander was running.
He didn’t know if the maneuver was going to work, but it sure was spectacular.
The destroyer was trailing a wake of flames across the face of the planet. If it were a habitable world, he was sure it would be one hell of a show from the surface. As it was, it was a heck of a show from space.
Mind you, the light show above isn’t half bad either.
He turned his head, looking at the augmented view through the holographic cockpit view around him as another laser bloom vaporized more dirt and dust in the rings above them while they passed close to the edge of the planet’s atmosphere.
“Imps seem to be getting aggravated,” Cardsharp said.
“Don’t believe it,” Noire cut in. “They’ve split their fleet, going around the planet. The light show is mostly just distraction, though I’m sure they wouldn’t cry too hard if they got in a lucky shot.”
“What, you’re telling me that the Empire isn’t stupid enough to take their cruisers into a steep gravity well while under hard warp? Shocking, I said, just shocking,” Tyke responded. “It’s almost like they want to keep their ships intact rather than ri
sk blowing out their generators and crashing headlong into a gas giant.”
The Archangels were skimming the upper atmosphere, their smaller mass making it far safer to warp space deeper in a gravity field, arcing around the face of the planet where they hoped to meet the boss’ ship as it came out the other side.
The destroyer was running on ballistic calculations now, the interference having finally cut them off from their limited comms and with it access to the navigation computers on the Archangels, so there was nothing left to do but wait.
Baphon
“Good news,” Steph said cheerfully. “The warp geometry Milla put together is holding up. We’re probably not going to burn up in the atmosphere.”
“Why does this sound like a good news/bad news situation, and you’re holding back the bad news?” Harris asked dryly from beside him.
“Well, the slightest mistake now will send us plunging into the planet to be crushed into a small ball . . .”
“That would be the bad news, I take it?”
“No, that’s great news,” Steph told him.
Harris winced. “I’m going to regret asking this, but how is that great news?”
“Come on, Marine, what are the odds that I make a mistake?”
“Oh Christ, Sarge! We’re all going to die!”
“Suck it up, Harris,” Buckler growled, holding on to a rail as the ship shook around him. “At least if we go, we get to tell this bastard we told you so for the rest of eternity.”
“That is never going to happen,” Steph growled, a chill creeping up his spine at the thought of spending eternity with a bunch of pissed-off Marines.
Trust Marines to take all the fun out of this, he thought in annoyance as he opened a comm to Milla. “I’m going to need every bit of power you can give me.”
“It is yours, try not to kill us with it.”
“What is it with everyone doubting me all of a sudden?” Steph complained.
“Who said it was sudden?” Harris asked.
“Oh shut up, Marine,” Steph said, putting all the power he could to the warp drive.
